Gov’t to Blame for Energy Efficiency Failures

Figures released by the Association for the Conservation of Energy estimate that installations of home energy efficiency measures will hit a shocking 10 year low, later this year.

The group, which ‘aims to end fuel poverty and reduce overall energy demand to ensure a secure and sustainable future’ revealed that the number of energy-saving measures installed through government programmes declined by 60% in the past year, falling from 1.65 million in 2012/13 to just 661,000 in 2013/14.

Further declines of up to 23% are expected, with figures of 507,000 estimated for later this year. Energy Bill Revolution, who commissioned the research, claim that the measures that were previously created to help UK residents save money on their energy bills, have “collapsed” as a result of failing government policies.

The campaign group – which is an alliance of over 190 charities, unions and businesses – say that the drop is due to Downing Street’s decision to scrap the ‘warm front’ scheme, which was the only government-backed energy efficiency programme for households categorised as ‘poor’.

Furthermore, they claim that there have been significant failures in other publicly-funded energy-saving schemes, including the government’s Green Deal program, which has been labelled an “abject failure”, and the Energy Company Obligation, which was simply, “poorly designed”.

Curiously, this fall in the uptake of energy efficiency procedures has happened despite the fact that there is still a huge requirement for such measures. There are currently 13 million households across the UK without condensing boilers, 5 million household that would significantly benefit from cavity wall insulation and a further 7.5 million in dire need of lofts insulation.

According to the campaign group, existing programmes created to tackle fuel poverty would miss targets endorsed by the government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change. As such, the task force is recommending that insulation for all remaining cavity walls and lofts should be completed by 2015, with 2.2 million solid wall insulation installations by 2022.

Ed Matthew, director of the Energy Bill Revolution campaign, said: “The government’s energy efficiency policies are in free fall. As a result, fuel poverty is getting worse and people are dying. The government must make home energy efficiency an infrastructure investment priority to put the funding in place to end this scandal once and for all.”

One comment on “Gov’t to Blame for Energy Efficiency Failures”

The reason is simple. Green Deal is an unmitigated disaster. A true classic designed by consultants, approved committee and therefore inappropriate for everyone governmental bodge.

simply put :-
– It’s too complex for many of the target consumers to understand – or rather to be bothered to understand.
– The engaged intelligent consumer (ho ho) who can understand it quickly realises that its a poor deal.

Essentially a loan (Many people don’t want extra debt – however secured – you can’t polish a turd) the devalues your home – I wouldn’t buy a house with a green deal entailment on it,

Finally the “Accreditted” companies who can undertake GD installation are quite simply rip-off-merchants – prices are typically double what you can get by shopping around a bit outside the cartel.

Nothing essentially wrong with ECO – The energy companies just need to free themselves of green deal and all its vestiges and the govt needs to get rid of the means testing shackles. Until recently I, as an employed semiprofessional with a reasonable but not excessive income was unable to access any of the schemes (And unwilling to use green deal) to upgrade the insulation in my property – principally, it was explained to me by successive energy companies, because I didn’t receive any benefits – I was/am a net contributor and therefore locked out of the ECO schemes. Recently things seem to have changed and BG are now coming to upgrade my insulation – for free next month – Huzzah